Inhaling smoke of any kind is dangerous, but the only side effects of pure narcotics are dizziness, nausea and constipation. America's holy war on narcotics also causes needless pain and drives pain sufferers to suicide. I have a little experience with this insanity myself. I underwent a number of operations to remove kidney stones over a nine month period, and I was never able to receive more than a week's supply of pain medication, provided I only used it in desperation. I would have gone to Canada or Britain, if I could have afforded it. Thanks a lot drug warriors. You would probably burn your opponents at the stake if you could.

Take International Paper Co., the world's largest paper firm. Curtis Koster, IP's technology business manager, said the company is intrigued by hemp as a way to address what timber interests call the looming worldwide "fiber crisis."

So paper firms are eager for new sources of fiber -- and hemp probably is the best, said Koster, who recently joined the board of directors of a new pro-hemp business council. "It's the strongest, easiest to grow and has the broadest geographical range," he said. While trees require decades to grow, hemp matures in 100 days -- so over time, hemp yields two to four times as much fiber per acre as wood, Koster said.

"The paper industry is by nature very cautious, but it's aggressively seeking data on hemp," said Med Byrd, a leading paper researcher at North Carolina State University. "That's a radical change." By maintaining its hard line against hemp, law enforcement "throws away science and common sense," he said. The pot controversy prevents his firm from officially expressing interest in hemp, said Koster. But he denounces federal agents' accusations that pro-hemp businesses are drug fronts -- he calls them "lies" that "make law enforcement look like baboons." "Should industry be interested in hemp?" Koster said. "Yes." He said he assumes hemp someday will be legal. But then industry would only be rediscovering a product as ancient as civilization.

I don't believe what he has said on the matter implies that he is pushing towards the wrong direction. He is basically just saying, as long as legalization is out of the question, we can talk. All the examples of Portugal here is not out of the question if you look at it that way.

Legalisation of canabis usage will take the sting out of the drug gangs and the enforcement agencies. But will Barack be able to do it rather than to debate with the Columbia prez on his suggestion. The dude is actually a status quo guy waving the Change banner.

As a firm supporter of Mr. Obama and his re-election, I say this: Mr. Obama’s position on marijuana is an offense against his constituents. Mr. Obama’s history of marijuana use underlines the hypocrisy of his anti-marijuana rhetoric. Obama’s party line on marijuana is offensive and denigrating to the young people and lefties the President needs to get re-elected. Had Mr. Obama ever been arrested for possession of marijuana on any of the many occasions when he smoked it as a young person he would have gotten a record instead of a candidature—how is this fair?

As a person who works with the homeless I am strongly opposed to hard drug sale and usage. I often see the toll of addiction on the masses at work. I am opposed to the legalization of drugs like cocaine, heroine, and methamphetamines; but legalizing marijuana just makes sense. It is less injurious to the mind than beer, and less injurious to the lungs than tobacco, and truth be told almost everyone has tried it—at least once.

The problem with legalized prostitution could just be that the regulatory structure created for it was too strict, so that a black market continued to operate alongside the legal market. Where there are black markets and actors operating outside the legal system, there will be corruption, violence, and exploitation.

Within a few blocks in every direction of me are places where I can get publicly, blackout drunk any night of the week. This is socially acceptable, if not encouraged. But God forbid I buy some psychedelic mushrooms to use at home.

Very much so; and your environment while you're tripping. Feeling unsafe, uncomfortable or threatened - the proverbial "bad vibes" - can lead to panic attacks and irrationally defensive/scared behaviour by provoking the fight or flight response. Your emotions run very strongly while on mushrooms in addition to the hallucinatory properties - so making sure your mood heads in a good direction is key.

It's important to be somewhere safe and pleasant if you choose to take psilocybin, and preferably you should be accompanied by a sober person who can keep an eye on you and make sure you enjoy the experience.

Just to spin-off a little on "America's massive investments over the past 40 years"; the CBC ran a story yesterday about PM Harper's press conference in Cartagena. About drug policy, Terry Milewski wrote:

"What I think everybody believes," Harper said, "is that the current approach is not working. But it is not clear what we should do."

This would be intriguing from any prime minister. From Stephen Harper, whose government's crime bill ratchets up the penalties for drug possession, it was startling.

Lest anyone think he'd undergone a conversion in Cartagena, Harper quickly added the other side of the story.

"Drugs, he said, "are illegal because they quickly and totally — with many of the drugs — destroy people's lives."

Was marijuana the exception he had in mind? We never got to ask. But perhaps that was enough eyebrow-raising for one day.

I guess Canada has the same problem with powerful constituencies sabotaging moves toward decriminalization.

" Brothels that play by the rules must employ high-wage locals with work permits; they find it hard to compete with pimps bringing in low-wage illegal immigrants."

How's that different from agriculture and construction? Those two industries drive far more human trafficking than prostitution, and trafficked laborers often work in appalling conditions, and die horrible deaths. Yet I don't see anybody sane calling for outlawing agriculture and construction.

That's not to say that drugs or prostitution aren't dangerous, high risk occupations, but they are not the only ones. And yet we choose to deal with occupational hazards in a rational way almost everywhere else, but those. Controlling other people's pleasure is big business for politicians.

While USA consumes 80% of drugs that goes from Colombia through Central America and Mexico, these countries invest their resources in looking out for criminals, these criminals are the cause of their system corruption and the violence and blood driven by the drug war. Latin American countries are poor, and need to focus on investment, education and health instead of focusing on a lost war. Things need to change, USA has to give a different approach to the drug problem, their citizens are consuming drugs and are treated as victims instead of criminals, the consumers are inmoral and are financing the violence in Mexico and Central America. They won't stop consuming, better to be realistic and regulate a free consumption.

Drug consumers aren't treated as victims in the US. They are treated as criminals, which is why they make up half the federal prison population.

Drug consumption isn't immoral. Laws that tend to create violent, destructive underground organizations are. If anything, drug consumers should be offered more treatment and less incarceration, and the shipment of drugs should be done by legitimate businessmen operating legally--regulated and taxed.

As someone who believes all drugs should be legalized, I fully support your post except one sentence: "Drug consumption isn't immoral".

While I agree that there are certainly a large number of morally neutral (and even slightly positive) recreational drug uses, there are also many drug uses that have huge costs to families and society. Crack and Heroin are two examples of drugs that are very hard to use in a manner that does not have a negative impact on society and abusers' loved ones.

Obama believes that drug decriminalization would make drugs more available to any people so that everyone would have drugs everywhere at anytime. However is not what is happening right now , I see junkies everywhere, in drugs ,having drugs, even teenagers are available to buy any kind of illegal drugs but not alcohol nor cigaretts and the war against drugs that has a cost of million of dollars with thousands of people killed either for drug dealers or authorities has mot had any good result so far, Drug mafias are getting richer and stronger every year as well as corruption. Even politicians are involved in this network. http://webinlaweb.blogspot.com/?view=classic

LexHumana: "...if (hypothetically) you could ensure that every inner-city youth could have a decent job with fair pay and benefits".
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I wonder who is this hypothetical "you" that should provide all the goods you mentioned? Does he have it hidden somewhere and just keep it maliciously away from the poor 'inner-city youths'?
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I also wonder how many of those 'inner-city youths' wouldn't touch a decent (or any) job with a pole even when it's offered to them on a plate.
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Drugs is a matter of personal choice. As crime is. Little can be done about both by 'providing' anything which persons in question don't seek.

"Drug decriminalisation, in contrast, has been a success everywhere it has been implemented."

I would beg to differ. Zurich's infamous "Needle Park" was a dismal failure -- it basically herded all the addicts into one place where you could provide medical care for overdoses, but it did nothing to reduce addiction, and it certainly did nothing to improve the neighborhood.

If all you are trying to accomplish with decriminalization is to allow drug users to continue using drugs, then your goal is pointless -- unless you are trying to reduce drug use, all you are doing is perpetuating the status quo. And I should point out that the status quo has both personal and societal costs, just like alcohol abuse does.

give the argument a bit more credit, eh? it seems pretty clear that the intention is to do more than just let addicts continue their abuse. i'm pretty sure the only reason latin americans would have suggested this in the first place is to eliminate economic incentives for drug gangs and cartels... you know, the fellas that have been committing wholesale slaughter in mexico and central america the last few years?

The goal isn't to "allow drug users to continue using drugs", the goal is to take away the enormous revenue streams for criminal enterprises and the inevitable violence and corruption that follows the money.

Good point, but "drug decriminalisation" does not try to reduce drug use, consuming drugs depends of how you are informed about drugs and how to say not when someone else offer you to consume drugs and that depends of the family, school. "drug decriminalisation" tries to stop drug dealers who kill , blackmail innocent people to continue in the business and to make the society more peaceful without a war against drug who is killing a lot of people in countries like Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia. http://webinlaweb.blogspot.com/?view=classic

The problem is that Mexico has had roughly the same number of deaths (50,000) from drug violence over the last six years as American war dead in Vietnam, in a country with roughly a third of the population of the then-US.

Or, put it this way: Imagine what the anti-war movement would have been like in the US if three times as many young men had died in Vietnam.

The level of violence in America during prohibition never reached that level, yet America found a way to abandon the Volsted Act.

The Mexicans are being asked to pay a very high price for the failure of US drug policy. If roles were reversed, America would not tolerate it.

Is the war on drugs really worth those 50,000 deaths? Is drug abuse any less bad than it would otherwise be?

I'm not familiar with Needle Park, but in general supervised injection-point programs work excellently. Addicts get free clean needles, so they don't get AIDS, which is an improvement in their lives. The drugs can be checked by authorities to make sure they're not tainted, so the addicts don't die, which is another improvement in their lives. And while the injection point may not improve its own immediate neighborhood, it does improve all the other neighborhoods where addicts used to shoot up. The Dutch system is to have the government provide the heroin itself to card-carrying addicts for free, driving criminal networks out of business and making the incentive to shoot up in the controlled injection point rather than elsewhere so strong that it eliminates the street trade. I think the problem many have with this system is that they worry that it removes the stigma from drug use. In fact, however, it turns out that going out to a nondescript government building next to a bus stop twice a day to have a nurse stick a needle in your arm is not widely regarded as cool, and heroin use has declined dramatically in the Netherlands for decades.

"Needle Park" was the slang term for an infamous experiment in Zurich, Switzerland to address the heroin problem between 1986 and 1992. They set aside a public park in which heroin use and commerce was legal, basically a large open air drug market for junkies. The authorities would monitor the park for overdoses, and distribute free needles for health purposes, but for the most part there was no law enforcement and minimal oversight. The result was a disaster.

The authorities in Zurich tried to modify the program multiple times, but eventually disbanded the program completely due to social and health concerns.

This early experiment in radical decriminalization showed that narcotics cannot simply be made legal and then ignored, with no social consequence. Switzerland and many other European nations have learned from this and set up monitored injection programs, which are focused more on drug rehabilitation. Your example of the Dutch use of heroin declining is not because it isn't "cool" anymore, but because the Dutch authorities take active steps to redirect addicts into rehabilitation programs.

This goes to my original statement, which I stand by 100% and will repeat for ease of reference: "If all you are trying to accomplish with decriminalization is to allow drug users to continue using drugs, then your goal is pointless -- unless you are trying to reduce drug use, all you are doing is perpetuating the status quo. And I should point out that the status quo has both personal and societal costs, just like alcohol abuse does."

I still have caveats, but I think we basically agree and are quibbling here. I mean, it's not true that it's pointless to do anything that doesn't reduce drug use. If you improve the health of drug addicts, reduce the rate at which they commit crime against others, and so forth, you've still got a winning proposition even if you don't reduce drug use. You may have a winning proposition even if drug use actually increases, depending on the collateral benefits. Then, you have to account for the percentage of people who successfully quit using heroin only to substitute with heavy drinking, which can be even worse for their bodies, minds and personalities. Finally, shifts in policy may simply cost less money and take up fewer social resources (free up police officers and social workers to deal with more serious problems, etc.). One may well decide that nothing at all is going to reduce the rate of drug abuse, so you might as well change the way you treat it in order to minimise other harms. The Dutch system has in fact led to declining rates of heroin use, but even if heroin use had remained steady, it would be a success because HIV rates fell, death rates fell, and heroin-related crime rates fell.

I think there's an unfortunate tendency to think that the *only* thing there's any point in doing with drug users is getting them to stop using drugs. Given that it's very, very hard to stop using drugs and relatively few people succeed, it's worth thinking about changes in policy that make users' lives better (and everyone else's) whether or not they have much success in getting people off drugs.

We are probably dancing on the head of a pin in this portion of the debate, but I do think that there is a hidden cost in the concept of a society simply medicating a portion of its populace into docility. Unless rehabilitation is the ultimate goal, there is little difference between jailing all addicts or keeping them in a perpetual stupor -- one is a jail with walls, the other is a jail without walls. If we were talking about dogs, we would be advocating ending suffering by euthanizing them. With humans, apparently it is easier to set up programs to get them to simply tranquilize themselves so that we don't have to bother with their antics.

You aren't reading the whole sentence: "Unless rehabilitation is the ultimate goal, there is little difference between jailing all addicts or keeping them in a perpetual stupor -- one is a jail with walls, the other is a jail without walls."

You cannot leave any time upon your choice to do so -- that is the fundamental definition of "addiction". Unless you are rehabilitated from your addiction, you are going to stay inside your self-made jail and languish there until your addiction kills you.

Actually, I would say that the true choice is between having them self-medicate, versus having them not medicate at all. This is why monitored injection programs with any modicum of success rely on rehabilitative efforts. To simply let junkies be junkies without threat of criminal sanction just to save money is pointless -- this just ends up being a program for killing off junkies in a slow, clean way, instead of letting them fend on the streets in a brutal, filthy way. If you are going to do that, you might be better off simply euthanizing them and saving all that time and effort. People seem to be operating under the assumption that a junkie can be a junkie AND be a perfectly normal functioning member of society, and that it is only the criminal nature of narcotics that is preventing him -- this belief is absurd.

You hate the criminal element. I understand that. You hate the high cost of interdiction. I understand that too. But the decriminalization "solution" merely consigns a junkie to his or her fate, with the government supplying the poison. The ultimate goal for any drug policy should be to eliminate demand, not simply perpetuate it.

The decriminalization/legalization solution could be a way to just let them kill themselves off quietly. But it certainly doesn't have to be.

Even if it is done that way, there are some benefits. But it also can be a step towards rehabilitation. Just as with alcoholics, some will choose not to change. Others will take what seems to us like a very long time to decide that they want to change. But at least it is their choice if and when to do so.

And once the "crime" of using drugs is removed from the discussion, it gets a lot easier to actually address the problem which led to drug use and sustains it. Until then, any attempt at rehabilitation runs into problems with people who are quitting, but not instantly and cold turkey. If drug use is criminal, any rehab program has to either report any relapse, or find itself on the wrong side of the law itself. Which makes treatment programs much more problematic to set up and run.

Add that to the detail that the current approach has proven massively ineffectual at limiting drug use, and the case for not legalizing it seems pretty weak.

Socially unaccepted businesses like prostitution tend to be dominated by organized crime even when legal. Alcohol was socially acceptable even during prohibition so once lifted, legitimate businesses flooded in. Gambling was dominated by organized crime even where legal until gambling became socially acceptable. I can't see heroin or meth becoming socially acceptable so there's every reason to believe legalization of those drugs would strengthen organized crime. I think marijuana, on the other hand, is socially acceptable enough to warrant more tolerance.

Such as? If you're going to make the claim that movies and healthcare are the same, what makes healthcare and drugs different?
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Edit: Sorry I didn't realize two different people posted, although my question still stands.

You a point I hadn't considered, which reminds me of the state lottery. State lotteries were quite often set up to undercut gang-run ones.

lets suppose that all the heroin and amphetamines are distributed by the government, in a situation where use can be monitored and treatment coordinated. Meanwhile, the state makes a killing on tax revenue, criminals are competed out of business and go back to stealing live copper wire or what ever else they do for cash.

The Party is more concerned with internal unrest rather than American drug policy, although Party members often smoke/snort/inject drugs imported from America to chillax, which is why the party supports drug liberalization in America.

I think we can separate out social acceptability into different branches of society. It was socially acceptable among Wilde's peers to do drugs just as its socially acceptable among wall street bankers, but that doesn't mean it is or was broadly acceptable

This problem is going to probably require a "Nixon goes to China" equivalent. The war on drugs lunacy has been stoked by Republicans for decades and any policy change by a Democratic figure would be condemned as "soft of drug crime". What will be far more difficult to overcome will be the opposition of for-profit prison businesses and the unionized work force of guards, both dependent on large criminal populations.
Strange how a country with the experience of Prohibition still in living memory could have repeated the same mistake.

I don't. My point was the option is foreclosed by past political stridency. Much like Nixon was accepted as a staunch anti-communist, it will take a staunch anti-drugs warrior to broach legalization. It is my opinion there are more of these on the Republican bench than the Democratic bench.

Drug decriminalisation, in contrast, has been a success everywhere it has been implemented. At some point this has got to become a fully recognised fact of public discourse,

Your faith in the ability of reality to intrude into the discussion is really touching. Touching, but unlikely, based on the record of trying to inject reality into discussions of various other subjects with similar levels of hysteria in their constituents.

It's not just the constituencies which have a vested economic interest which are the problem (although they are certainly a problem). It is the constituencies which have made defining drugs as evil, and the battle against them a high moral imparative, a critical part of their world-view which will be the hardest to overcome.

At this point, change in America will essentially require another couple of decades -- time to allow those with the most closed minds to exit the voting population.

"Decriminalization" is what happens when the law against it is repealed at one level. Thus, a state could decriminalize drugs. But that doesn't make them legal, as long as Federal law still prohibits them.

I don't think I'm in favor of legalization/decriminalization. But Obama's position is also wrong. If drugs were not illegal, it would take the money out of them, which is what drives the corruption. Nobody worries about the corrupting effects of legitimate agriculture, because there's not enough money in wheat to make it worth while (though I suppose United Fruit might serve as a counterexample).

I don't know that I have a solution. I see the problems with the current situation. But I also see problems with legalization.

Maybe something like "they're legal, but if you commit a crime either while under the influence or in order to support a habit, then part of your sentencing *will* be treatment"? That might alleviate part of the problem.

I guess the thing that bugs me is alcoholism. If drugs were legal, how many people are going to become addicted, and it's going to ruin their lives? (And, yes, that happens with alcohol, and yet alcohol's legal. And some say that marijuana is no more addictive than alcohol. But where do you draw the line? If you keep crack and meth illegal, then you still have the same problems. And if you make them legal... well, anyone who claims that crack is no more addicting than alcohol is smoking something.)

But would the damage from the addictions be less than the damage that the drug wars are doing, including the damage in Central and South America? I don't know, which is a big part of why I don't have a concrete proposal.

There is plenty of money and corruption in perfectly legal commerce -- witness the smuggling of counterfeit goods, the smuggling of untaxed cigarettes, and even the manufacture of bootleg liquor even though you can legally buy liquor nearly everywhere (yes, moonshining still happens in the U.S.).

The driving question should be "what is the personal and societal cost associated with drug use"? It is not sufficient to say that criminalization has costs, because a lot of those costs can be addressed other ways -- for example, if (hypothetically) you could ensure that every inner-city youth could have a decent job with fair pay and benefits, and not have to worry about getting shot at or dying before your 21st birthday, how many of these young people would bother going out and hustling drugs on the street (and before you say "money", you should know that low-level guys on the street don't make much money and live with their moms -- it is the kingpins that make the real money).

Interesting that you raise the problem of alcoholism. The arguments for banning alcohol mirror those for banning drugs, somethimes in amazing detail. And yet we eventually figured out that Prohibition was worse than the problem which it was intended to solve. We still have alcoholics, just as we did in the 1800s when the push for Prohibition began. But we deal with that problem, and don't merely try to ban their drug of choice.

Would be have problems with addicts if drugs were decriminalized? Sure. (Of course, we have that now, too.) But it actually becomes easier to treat the addiction if everybody isn't distracted by the drug involved being illegal.

And it may be worth mentioning that, whereas alcohol is legal (for adults) but marijuana is not, any high school kid will tell you that it is actually easier for him to get pot than beer. Why? Because the liquor store owner doesn't want to lose his ability to make legal sales; but the drug pusher doesn't care because he isn't going to lose legal sales.

Maybe one way to do it would be to tax drug consumption heavily enough to internalise as much of its health/social costs as possible, and not too heavily as to not create more incentive for illegal drug trade/consumption. A very fine line to walk, probably, but it might be worth a try.

Also, as Jouris said, it is a lot easier to tackle a problem (substance dependence in this case) if we know that it is there in the first place, as opposed to hidden in dark alleys or VIP rooms.

Just as counterintuitive as Jouris "save our children from drugs, legalise drugs!" slogan, you could have "reduce drug consumption - make drugs available in hospitals!", or something like that.

If it impairs judgement, is highly addictive, or hazardous to your health, I'd prohibit the sale to minors. If it merely impairs judgment, I'd regulate its use like alcohol. E.g., can't be drugged up while driving. If it impairs judgment AND is highly addictive or hazardous to your health, I'd restrict it as much as possible including a possible ban.

Using this framework, marijuana should be regulated like alcohol. Maybe ecstasy, LSD, and shrooms too. Cocaine is debatable. Crack, heroin, and meth should be restricted as much as possible and probably banned.

When regulating drugs, illegal sale can be criminalized, illegal possession should be fined, and addiction treated.

Merely decriminalising will help, eventually, to remove some of the stigma of those going to seek help. No, being an alchoholic isn't something to be proud of. But I'm willing to bet we all know some people who have gone through it, gone to AA or whatever their choice was, and got through it. How many people would be willing to admit the same thing about cocaine, or heroin?

Further, if I go to a liquor store and someone knocks me out and steals my beer, I can go to the police. If it was some cocaine, I'm left out in the cold with information about a criminal that I can't give to the police. There are multiple knockon effects of allowing the status quo to continue.

And the knock-on effects you mention reach well beyond the distribution areas, and are probably more acute in production locations. I thought it confounding that such issues were not made more prominent in the aftermath of 9/11 when the evidence was mounting to show how the drug trade had turned into a frighteningly efficient ATM for terrorism.

It is good to see that the tide is slowly turning. We may see tectonic changes in the social, economic and, of course, legal approaches to the drug "business" in our lifetime yet. Perhaps even before we are hired as "senior" burger flippers at Maccas. :)

Why does the "personal cost" matter and what business is that of yours or the govt? It's none of your busines. If I want to drink myself into Liver Disease that's my choice as long as I am willing to pay the health care costs. And besides, even good personal choices have a cost. Are we going to outlaw working more than eight hours a day cause its stressful, or how about swimming in the ocean because you might get eaten by a shark. Let people live their lives with the freedom to make bad choices.

It absolutely is sufficient to say that criminalization has costs. Clearly criminalizing drugs, just like Prohibition, has created a severe cost to society that more than outweighs what ever benefits, if any, the War on Drugs has caused. And frankly I can't think of one benefit. I challenge you to produce one. The War on Drugs is both a complete failure and a crime against humanity. It has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and is no closer today to ending drug use than it was when we started it over a hundred years ago. What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result!

Re point 1, I disagree. I make alcoholic beverages all the time for fun, entirely legally. I could, given some very simple equipment, make vodka out of cheerios, though moonshine is still illegal in this country. It just would cost me a lot more than I would from getting it at a store, in terms of time and/or money. The cost barrier is high enough that making it is uneconomical, even if you have to rely on paying the nearest hobo 50 bucks to get a few cases. The black market is undermined by Budweiser and Wild Turkey.

The second point stands, but only for consumption in schools. A lot of alcohol consumption happens off campus.

1. That's kind of my point. It takes a lot more effort to make alcohol than it does to grow weed. If it were as easy as watering a plant, you'd see a lot more homemade alcohol and as a consequence, more kids with access to it.